WordPress Mobile Edition: Redirect Flaw or Bloatware?

MobilityNigeria is powered by WordPress. As such, the site uses the WordPress Mobile Edition (WME) plugin by Alex King to cater for mobile users. WordPress Mobile Edition presents a mobile-friendly version of WordPress sites to mobile versions. It is a great piece of work.

Up until a week or two ago, MobilityNigeria utilized WME version 2.1a, and it worked flawlessly. Then we upgraded to the sleek, new version 3.03 (3.04, the latest version, kept returning an activation error).

Yesterday night, I did some browsing on a more basic phone than the super-smartphones I normally use. Visiting MobilityNigeria on the phone’s browser returned an error to the effect that the page was “too large” to be downloaded. I repeatedly tried to access the site but got similar results.

Finally, I thought of checking another WordPress site that uses WME 3.03, www.davidajao.com/blog. Surprise, surprise – same result!

Note that MobilityNigeria never had this problem with even the most basic of mobile browsers when it was running WME 2.1a. I reverted to WME 2.1a this morning, and MobilityNigeria now loads fine on that same phone.

Clearly, WME 3.03 was doing something wrong. I see two options:

WME 3.03 is not redirecting the browser in question to the mobile version, and so the browser is attempting to load the web interface and finding it too large, or

The default WME 3.03 theme (Carrington Mobile), which we used, is bloated, and the mobile browser in question finds it too large

I went through the mobile browser’s User Agent list for both WME 2.1a and WME 3.03, and besides the touch browsers, YahooCrawler, and Samsung Omnia agents added to 3.03, the list is the same.

From here, it looks like the problem is that of bloatware – the Carrignton Mobile theme just being too large for some mobile browsers to handle. But then, I may have missed something along the way.

Anyone facing these issues? Any ideas? I’ll also send a feedback to the developer, so we can see if anything can be worked out.

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About Mister Mobility

Mister Mobility started blogging about mobile in 2004 as a fun way to share his passion for gadgets and mobile services. He has owned over 200 mobile phones. His current device is a Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus.

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12 comments

It turns out that I don’t use Alex King’s mobile edition plugin for my personal blog. I use a different one made in South Africa. You might want to read the full details about the latest WME release again.

Okay guys. It has been a busy day for me, but I finally have the WordPress Mobile Pack from MobiForge running, and its beautiful. The range of configurable options is just amazing.

Here are a few details: – use my own custom mobile theme – very basic mobile admin that should work on less capable browsers. For example, I am now able to post new articles and moderate comments from the built-in browser of the LG KS360 – use of widgets in mobile version

This is indeed a very capable replacement for Alex King’s plugin (a good job in itself). What is a real bonus with this plugin is that it makes true mobility possible on WordPress, as against mobility on high-end devices.

I am putting together an article to address why the mobile web won’t become mainstream until more basic devices (not just high-end mobiles and smartphones) are able to access a wider range of web services. Watch this space!

Hi Yomi, I am glad you found our plugin useful 😀 and thanks for your feedback on mobiforge, keep it coming 🙂

I am also personally looking forward to read your thoughts on mobile web for more basic devices: that is a point dotMobi has been stressing from the beginning (which is one of the reasons we published our testing tool http://ready.mobi to help people build more standard mobile sites), and I think you are in an interesting position to give us an interesting perspective on how we can make things better on that front.

Hi all – I’ve got another great option for you – and it’s better than the one you’ve already talked about!

It’s called the Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress and it mobilizes your blog. It works for every single device, from a WML phone to a brand new swanky phone with XHTML. Images are dynamically resized and you get the option to really customize your blog any way you want.

In addition, you can upload mobile logos, style your site so the mobile version matches the website and you retain your brand identity. You also get loads of control over mobile SEO.